The hallway smelled like old newspapers-dry, yellowing, and forgotten.
Li Wei-An stood at the center of it all, holding a box against his chest as the thin fluorescent tube above him hummed with a dying pulse. The walls of the fourteenth-floor corridor were the same tintless gray as every other cheap apartment block he had lived in, but this one had something else layered into it-an older smell, as though years of tenants had exhaled into the concrete and the air had never been cleared out.
He shifted the box in his arms and nudged the unit door open with his foot.
706. The metallic numbers were peeling slightly, curled at their corners like something exhausted.
Inside, the apartment was smaller than the listing photos had implied.
But he wasn't surprised. In Taipei, every cheap apartment looked a few centimeters larger online. Every window promised a city view that turned out to be the wall of another building. Every floorboard promised "recent renovation" and delivered a groan.
He walked in slowly.
His shoes echoed once. Just once.
The rest of the apartment gave him nothing back. No bounce, no warmth, no sense of being lived in. Just stillness.
Wei-An's fingertips traced the light switch near the door. He pressed it.
The bulb flickered once, twice, then surrendered to a dim yellow glow that barely lit the living room.
"Well," he muttered to himself, "it's cheap for a reason."
He stepped inside fully and set the box down. The floor felt slightly uneven beneath his weight, as though one tile sat a little higher than the others. Something subtle, nothing you'd complain to a landlord about, but definitely there. A quiet wrongness.
He turned toward the hallway that led to the bedroom.
There were only two doors-bathroom on the right, bedroom straight ahead.
The bedroom door stood half-closed, not quite fitting into its frame. At first he thought maybe the previous tenant hadn't shut it properly, but as he approached, he noticed the way the door leaned just slightly forward, as though its hinges were a fraction too loose. It gave the strange impression that the door had been pulled open from the inside rather than pushed shut from the outside.
He pressed his palm against it.
It didn't move.
He pushed harder.
Still nothing. The wood resisted him with a stubborn, almost weary pressure.
Then, as if deciding something, the door swung inward with a low, dragging creak.
A breath of stale, cold air escaped the bedroom.
For a brief moment-only a second-Wei-An thought he saw something shift in the darkness inside, like a shape withdrawing from view. But when the weak hall light spilled into the room, nothing moved. Nothing waited. Just a small, simple bedroom with old floorboards and a window facing the alley.
"Old hinges," he told himself. "Humidity."
Still, his skin prickled.
He stepped inside.
The bedroom was colder than the rest of the apartment. He stood still for a moment, letting his ears adjust. He always listened first-it was a habit from working with sound. Microphones taught you to hear the things people normally ignore: low vibrations, distant footsteps, the crackle of electricity.
Right now, he heard nothing.
Not the hum of a fridge.
Not the rumble of distant scooters.
Not even the city's muffled chaos filtering through the window.
Just a thick, padded quiet.
He put his hand flat on the wall. It felt dry and slightly dusty, as though nobody had touched it in years. The corners of the room carried shadows even at midday. He frowned and tugged the curtains open. Gray light spilled in, but it didn't brighten the room much. The alley window was narrower than he expected, framed by tall buildings on either side. The sun struggled to reach this far.
He turned back toward the door.
Only now did he notice how slightly crooked it was.
The top corner leaned inward, the bottom pushed outward-tilted just a couple degrees off normal. Enough to make the door never fully close unless you forced it, but not enough to be considered a defect worth fixing.
Still, the sight irritated him.
He stepped closer and touched the edge.
It swung a little.
Not much.
Just barely perceptible.
But it moved.
This time, when he pressed it shut, the latch didn't click. The door simply rested against the frame, hovering, uncertain. He pushed until it finally clicked with a hesitant metallic snap.
He let go.
The door stayed closed.
Then, as he turned away-
click
The latch slipped on its own.
The door drifted open by a single centimeter.
A thin line of shadow cut through the gap.
Wei-An stared at it.
Something about the slight opening felt… deliberate. Not accidental. Like a mouth that refuses to fully close.
He pushed it shut again. Harder.
This time it stayed.
He walked back into the living room and exhaled slowly. He wasn't superstitious, and he wasn't easily unnerved. But the apartment felt like a room that had been holding its breath. A place waiting for someone to disturb its dust.
He unpacked slowly through the afternoon, careful with his equipment. Sound recorders. A set of microphones. A pair of studio headphones.
He lined them neatly on the table. His work required precision-recording voiceovers, cleaning audio files, restoring damaged footage. It paid well enough to live quietly, anonymously. That was all he wanted.
Late afternoon bled into early evening without him noticing.
The apartment's silence made time feel slower.
He set up his small portable recorder just to test the acoustics of the space-habit, nothing more. He pressed the button, listened to a few seconds of playback, and frowned. The sound of his own breathing came through muted, muffled, as though it had passed through a thick blanket.
He tapped the wall.
On the recording, the tap sounded delayed, softer, as if the walls absorbed sound strangely.
A tiny discomfort settled into his chest.
He dismissed it.
He kept unpacking until the sky turned fully dark.
When he finally went into the bedroom to lie down, the crooked door hovered open again.
Just that same thin crack.
Just one centimeter.
He closed it firmly this time.
Made sure the latch clicked.
He lay down, tired, staring at the ceiling.
Minutes passed.
The apartment was completely still.
Then… somewhere in the darkness…
A faint sound.
tap… tap… tap…
Slow.
Deliberate.
Not from the window.
Not from the walls.
From the other side of the bedroom door.
Wei-An turned his head toward the door. A chill crept beneath his skin. He held his breath to listen.
Nothing.
Silence.
He exhaled shakily, told himself it was metal contracting from temperature change. Old buildings did that. He wasn't going to jump at shadows on his first night here.
He closed his eyes.
But as he drifted toward sleep, he felt-rather than heard-the softest shift of air near the door.
A faint pressure.
Like someone standing very still on the other side.
He forced his eyes open again.
The bedroom door remained shut.
But something felt wrong in the dark.
Like the room was not as empty as he believed.
He reached over to touch the wall beside his bed.
The plaster felt cold.
Colder than before.
And somewhere, pressed between the silence and the darkness, he thought he heard something else:
A slow, quiet exhale.
Almost… almost like breathing.
Not his.
Someone else's.
Coming from the crack where the door almost met its frame.